'68 CAMARO RS COUPE RESTORATION PROJECT: April 2012

The 1968 camaro model featured a restyled center console, and a restyled secondary gauge package with a "sawtooth" design. The sawtooth design didn't contain a clock, so when the optional instrument package was ordered, the clock was combined with the tachometer in the right side instrument pod creating 1968's Tick-Tock-Tach.

The 1968 camaro was the first to feature Astro Ventilation. It did not have side vent windows.

Side marker lamps were used for the first time in camaros in 1968.

The dash location for the ignition was last used in the 1968 camaro model.

The headlight cover doors in 1968 camaros were vacuum operated rather than electric as before.

OVERVIEW OF THE '68 CAMARO

http://www.firstgencamaro.com/1968.html

THE GM NORWOOD ASSEMBLY PLANT

Located in Norwood, Ohio, the Norwood Assembly Plant built General Motors cars between the years of 1923 and 1987. When it first opened the plant employed 600 workers and was capable of producing 200 cars per day. At its peak in the early 1970s it employed nearly 9,000. The first car rolled off the assembly line on August 13, 1923. Among the cars built at Norwood were the Chevrolet Bel Air, Biscayne, Impala, Nova, Caprice, Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, and the Buick Apollo. The plant grew to cover an area of approximately 50 acres and had 3,000,000 square feet of space under roof. The plant produced its last vehicle on August 26, 1987, a Chevrolet Camaro.

Vintage Video

Engine Shots

BACKROUND - SEPAW

Before any official announcement, reports began running during April 1965 within the automotive press that Chevrolet was preparing a competitor to the Ford Mustang, code-named Panther On June 21, 1966, around 200 automotive journalists received a telegram from General Motors stating, "...Please save noon of June 28 for important SEPAW meeting. Hope you can be on hand to help scratch a cat. Details will follow...(signed) John L. Cutter – Chevrolet Public Relations – SEPAW Secretary." The following day, the same journalists received another General Motors telegram stating, "Society for the Eradication of Panthers from the Automotive World will hold first and last meeting on June 28...(signed) John L. Cutter – Chevrolet Public Relations SEPAW Secretary." These telegrams puzzled the automotive journalists.
On June 28, 1966, General Motors held a live press conference in Detroit’s Statler-Hilton Hotel. It would be the first time in history that 14 cities were hooked up in real time for a press conference via telephone lines. Chevrolet General Manager Pete Estes started the news conference stating that all attendees of the conference were charter members of the Society for the Elimination of Panthers from the Automotive World and that this would be the first and last meeting of SEPAW. Estes then announced a new car line, project designation XP-836, with a name that Chevrolet chose in keeping with other car names beginning with the letter C such as the Corvair, Chevelle, Chevy II, and Corvette. He claimed the name, "suggests the comradeship of good friends as a personal car should be to its owner" and that "to us, the name means just what we think the car will do... Go!" The new Camaro name was then unveiled. Automotive press asked Chevrolet product managers, "What is a Camaro?" and were told it was "a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs."

The Camaro was first shown at a press preview in Detroit, Michigan, on September 12, 1966, and then later in Los Angeles, California, on September 19, 1966. The Camaro officially went on sale in dealerships on September 29, 1966, for the 1967 model year.